Even with the first storm of the season coming in on Friday, we've had some really lovely weather. I was waiting for the bus on Sunday morning in beautiful sunshine and crisp coolness. It's gone a lot colder, though - since the weekend I am wearing the official First Hoodie of the autumn, and in the last couple of weeks I've gone from sleeping under a sheet to a duvet with a blanket on top, at least to warm up.

We had a fancy dinner out on Thursday with the suppliers for our new system, who have been great colleagues, so it was nice to spend some time with them. It was a Chinese "banquet", with lots of terrifying whole-animal courses (a whole turbot! a giant dismembered lobster! what looked like an entire suckling pig with, like, the ribcage removed, splayed out on a platter with its face on one end and four trotters on the corners!), but they'd spent a couple of weeks negotiating with the restaurant to make sure there was enough I could eat, so I definitely had plenty of options. The highlight for me was some particularly good salt and pepper baked tofu, but I also had egg fried rice, and half-a-dozen vegetable dishes, and crispy noodles, and I forget what else.

But actually the nicest part was that the suppliers called me the project MVP right there in front of everyone! Which is of course extremely flattering. And I did put in a lot of work, including some serious project management effort, so it's nice to have that recognised.

The next day was moderately entertaining, because practically everyone was massively hung-over in the office ("I'm not feeling very clever", said Boss Lady). One colleague had driven, so also didn't drink, and she and I congratulated each other (privately!) about it. I did have a bit of a social hangover ("oh no, did I talk too much?? did I say anything stupid? was I super embarrassing???") but mostly I tried to console myself with the fact that practically everyone else was drunk, so probably they wouldn't have noticed or remembered if I did. Ahhh, the joys of being socially awkward.

Now I could do with a resurgence of those project management skills, because there is still Too Much Going On at work, and I am not doing a very good job of, like, properly engaging with it. But I did at least go through the 52 IT Service Desk emails in my inbox and reduce them down somewhat; the "under 100 email" inbox is within my grasp, possibly.